Paramount’s Adam Goodman Touts Value of Theatrical Experience

Paramount Film Group President Adam Goodman wants to protect the sanctity of the moviegoing experience even as the studio stays open to all the other opportunities technology provides.

Goodman addressed the myriad issues new media poses in a Q&A Monday at the Variety Entertainment Technology Summit in Los Angeles with Variety’s senior features editor David Cohen.

With an increasing amount of Paramount’s movies taking advantage of 3D and other innovations in display on the silver screen, he sees theaters continuing to be the first driver of content across the various windows.

“Frankly, I don’t really want to spend years of my life working on something to be able to watch it while I’m standing at a bus stop,” said Goodman. “When we first step out to do something, we want it to be presented in the best way it should be presented.”

Goodman cited the introduction of the Paramount InSurge division, which focuses on creating movies targeting distinct audience segments on budgets a fraction of the blockbusters the studio traditionally produces, as something best viewed in theaters as a communal experience with friends.

“You have to see it on the bigscreen,” he said of the social appeal of films from InSurge. “You don’t just want to steal that in a dorm room.”

While Paramount takes a close read of audience segments to figure out what movies come out of InSurge, Goodman believes there are limits to how a studio can leverage so called “big data” to identify programming opportunities considering the long lag time from greenlight to release in the movie world.

Consequently, content decisions have to be driven more by a gut sense of figuring out how audiences are best served. “We talk about what’s not out there,” said Goodman. “Those are the things that we run fastest too.”

There’s plenty of technology that excites Goodman in terms of innovating the filmmaking process, from pre-visualization to distribution. He has particular interest in the kind of first-person perspective a certain buzzed-about form of eyewear being manufactured at Google has in store for cinema.

Said Goodman, “I want to see the first Google Glass movie.”

Later in the day at conference, Goodman’s defense of the theatrical experience was echoed on a panel about “zeitgeist storytelling” featuring directors Jon M. Chu (G.I. Joe: Retaliation”) and Joseph Kosinski (“Oblivion”).

For Kosinski, the primary challenge of filmmaking is coming up with concepts that encourage consumers to sidestep cost barriers like parking and concessions enough to want to come to theaters. “That means coming up with stories and ideas that will draw people out,” he said. “That means big stories, big ideas, big spectacle.”

For Chu, the lures of personal viewing and theatrical viewing don’t need to be at odds; they can be harmonized. He threw out an example of tossing content to consumers’ mobile devices at the close of a movie that allows the narrative experience to continue on their way out of theaters. “I like to guide someone in the dark,” he said, “but you can use a second screen to continue that storytelling thrust.

I’m very curious how Adam reconciles preserving the value of the art of film with releasing transformers 4, iron man 3, and other movies that, while technologically cutting edge perhaps, are terribly cliched, rehashed stories.

Well it helps that he didn’t release Iron Man Three. Then I suppose it my also help that Iron Man Three, which he didn’t release, isn’t a rehashed story, at all.

Then there’s also the fact tha the big money these films bring in, has for decades been what helps you to be able to take a risk on a more obviously artistic / cerebral film.

It takes all kinds, Beer as well as fine wine, Burgers as well as fine dining; a few too many people seem to forget this, and that everybody has a right to be entertained, not just those looking for an exceptionally artistic experience in every film made.

(Clearly you haven’t seen Transformers 4 (Not that I’m expecting it to win at Cannes of course) yet you judge it already, leading me to risk a guess that you haven’t seen Iron Man 3 either. So not only telling the masses they don’t have a right to be entertained by big, but relatively dumb films, but doing so using a crystal ball to judge films as yet unmade.